22 PISCATORIAL REMINISCENCES 



tised with the rod and line, invites us by inte- 

 resting ties to this branch of the animal creation. 

 Poesy has almost exhausted her stores in praise 

 of angling, and in prose it has been eulogized 

 in hundreds of volumes. Numerous anecdotes 

 crowd on our recollection, of the wonderful hold 

 which the practice of angling has on the affec- 

 tions of man, and that from the prince to the 

 beggar. The urchin of six ensnares the stickle- 

 back with rapture, and the veteran of seventy 

 as eagerly weighs out the barbie. Alike de- 

 lighted, the one flatters himself almost a man, 

 and the other rejoices in his semblance to youth- 

 ful vigour. Elaine. 



Angling, as a sport, requires as much enthusi- 

 asm as poetry, and as much patience as mathe- 

 matics. I could not be more than six or seven 

 years old, when I sallied out one day to the river 

 Ayr, with a bent pin for a hook, as Christopher 

 North has described so graphically and well ; 

 but instead of a minnow or a beardie (the loach 

 or the stone loach of the south), I hooked a 

 large trout ; my yarn thread was strong enough 

 to twitch out the trout to the green bank, where 

 I stood ; but the bank unfortunately sloped down 

 to the water's edge, and my bent pin having no 

 barb to take a firm hold, the trout slipped off, 

 and spanged down the bank, and in an instant, 

 to my unutterable grief, was lost in the dark 



